James Blunt breaks silence on claims he was ‘famous British singer’ who Hayden Panettiere was put into bed with when she was 18

James Blunt has addressed the speculation he was the ‘famous British singer’ who Hayden Panettiere was put into bed with aboard a yacht when she was just 18.

The 52-year-old singer shared a link to a Substack article on Monday which argued he was not the unnamed musician from the late actress’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning released last year.

In the book, the actress, who died at 36 of a suspected overdose last week, wrote she was 18 when a friend brought her on to a yacht to meet a British singer-songwriter who was in his 30s at the time, only for her to walk into a cabin and find the man naked in bed. 

Panettiere said the friend pulled up the sheets and told her: ‘I want you to get in bed with him. He has a huge d***.’

Many internet sleuths had speculated that the unnamed man mentioned in Panettiere’s memoir was Blunt, but the Substack article shared by the singer, written by journalist Dean Piper, claimed that the timeline does not fit.

When contacted by the Daily Mail in recent months, Blunt’s representatives have categorically denied any insinuation the singer is the one referenced in Panettiere’s memoir. 

Piper had pointed out a photo of Blunt and Panettiere from Cannes in 2009 was actually taken when the actress was 19 years old, nearly 20, at the time.

Rumours began to form after the photograph and a 2009 article claiming Blunt and Panettiere were flirty at a charity event the day before being spotted on a boat together, resurfaced.

However, Piper claimed in his new piece that if the alleged encounter had happened when Panettiere was 18, there was no way that Blunt had been involved. Panettiere also says she had never met the yacht singer before and likely never again, though there are pictures of Blunt and the actress from multiple events.

Piper goes on to say that other factors rule the British singer-songwriter out, including the size of his penis, where Joan Collins described a moment where Blunt gave a speech wearing only a pair of speedos ‘concealing what one wag described as “a package worthy of a field mouse”.’

Blunt did not explicitly deny the claim himself.

Panettiere was found dead of a suspected overdose on August 16 at an Airbnb in Greenville, South Carolina, where she had traveled with on/off boyfriend Brian Hickerson, a native of the state. 

Hickerson and his brother, Zach, were both at the scene when Panettiere was pronounced dead. 

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has joined the probe into the actress’s death.

Meanwhile, in Panettiere’s memoir released last year, she detailed the aforementioned encounter with an unnamed British singer-songwriter.

Writing in a chapter titled Trust, Panettiere wrote how she was traveling on a super yacht with other celebrities cruising around the South of France.

Panettiere says that she was traveling with a ‘trusted’ female friend, who ultimately encouraged her to get into bed with the singer.

It was claimed that the women spent multiple days aboard the yacht, in which they swam in the sea, danced long into the night and rubbed elbows with the ship’s other famous passengers.

But Panettiere alleges that her trip took a more disturbing course one night, when her trusted friend interrupted her dinner to ask her to come below deck to meet someone.

After stepping into a private cabin, she writes that she came face-to-face with a ‘famous 30-something British singer-songwriter’ who was shirtless in his bed, with the sheets covering his lower body.

‘”Oh my God,” I thought. “Is he naked under there?”‘ Panettiere wrote.

She adds that her friend then whispered, ‘I want you to get in bed with him,’ then left her and the unnamed man alone in his cabin.

Panettiere writes that she did as she was told at first, but her mind and body soon became disconnected.

‘My body no longer felt like my own,’ she wrote.

According to the memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere added that her experience as a child actor, who was constantly being ‘managed’ by adults, had instilled in her a sense of blind trust in others, even when her instincts suggested that was unwise.

‘As soon as the door clicked closed, my survival instinct kicked in,’ she continues.

Panettiere claims that she told the famous anonymous man, ‘Look… I don’t know what she said to you, but this is not going to happen.’

Then, she ran out of the room and back to her cabin, where she booked a hotel on the mainland for safer accommodations and prepared to disembark.

Panettiere, who says the incident made her feel as if she had been betrayed by her friend, describes it as feeling as if she had been ‘kicked in the face’.

‘She’d confided in me, pampered me and treated me like her best friend – then turned around and treated me like a call girl,’ Panettiere alleges.